Amidst the painful reality of marriage in a fallen world the archetype of Jesus’ marriage to his church serves not to damn us, nor to dishearten us with an impossible ideal, but to encourage and even empower us. Time and again the Old Testament likens the LORD to a faithful husband who loves Israel his bride even after she had committed adultery by turning to false gods. 

In the Louvre you may see artists in smocks ensconced with paints and easels before the great masters. Carefully they copy those masterworks. They imitate the master’s palette and every stroke of the master’s brush. They strain to paint as exact a copy of the original as possible.

In Ephesians 5 Paul sits us before God’s masterpiece, The Marriage of Jesus and His Church. So that husbands and wives may imitate the Master. So that the Master may paint us to be a perfect and radiant portrait of himself.

God the Faithful Bridegroom

In the prophetic books the LORD often portrayed his relationship to Israel as a marriage:

Isaiah 54:5 For your Maker is your husband – the LORD Almighty is his name.

Isaiah 62:5 As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

Hosea 2:19–20 I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.

Jeremiah 31:32 “I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

As a bridegroom and bride make a marriage covenant, God had made a covenant of love with his people.

Jesus the Faithful Bridegroom

Jesus likewise portrayed himself as a bridegroom to his people.

When the disciples of John the Baptist criticised Jesus and his disciples for their lack of fasting – a sign of grief and mourning – Jesus said that he was a bridegroom with his guests: “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?” (Mat. 9:15) John the Baptist saw himself as Jesus’ best man, who “is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29). In the Parable of the Ten Virgins Jesus likens his return to the arrival of the bridegroom at the wedding feast (Mat. 25:1–13). And Jesus’ final reconciliation with his people in the New Heaven and Earth is portrayed as a joyous wedding:

Revelation 19:7 Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

Revelation 21:2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

When pressed on the subject of divorce, Jesus referred his inquisitors to the institution of marriage in Genesis and warned against adultery and wrongful divorce in the strongest possible terms:

Matthew 19:4–9 Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. . . . I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.

Jesus fiercely protects marriage because he is the faithful and fiercely protective bridegroom of his bride – his people.

Ephesians 5

When Paul urges husbands and wives to look to the example of Jesus’ marriage to his church, he does not hold up Jesus’ love for his people as an illustration for what earthly marriage ought to be. He does the opposite. He holds up earthly marriage as an illustration of Jesus’ love for his church.

In his parables Jesus used earthly scenes to display unseen heavenly realities. Earthly marriage is to be a parable which displays, glorifies, the unseen heavenly reality of Jesus’ love for his church.

Jesus’ love for his church is the original. Our marriages are to be the copy.

Thus Paul builds his instructions to husbands and wives upon the heavenly original, as that which earthly marriage was given to reflect and glorify. 

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